NGC 3621: Far Beyond the Local Group
Image Credit & Copyright: Processing - Robert Gendler, Roberto Colombari
Data - Hubble Legacy Archive, European Southern Observatory, et al.
Explanation: Far beyond the
local group of galaxies lies
NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation
Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous
island universe are loaded with luminous blue star clusters, pinkish starforming regions, and dark dust lanes. Still, for astronomers
NGC 3621 has not been just another
pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Some of its brighter stars have been used as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic
distances and the
scale of the Universe. This
beautiful image of NGC 3621, is a composite of space- and ground-based telescope data. It traces the loose spiral arms far from the galaxy's brighter central regions for some 100,000 light-years. Spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant background galaxies are scattered across the colorful skyscape.
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